Not Right or Wrong, Just Smart

Had an example this morning of the difference between a "professional" businessperson and someone who just runs (or works at) a business.

In a nutshell, we got ripped off -- bought a little coupon book a few weeks ago, went to use a coupon for Sunday brunch today and was told by the restaurant staff that our coupon was a fake.

Now, we don't doubt that the restaurant is being honest. They probably aren't just trying to get out of honouring the coupons.

But, their reaction could have been better.

They said: "Sorry about that. Write down your name and number though, because we're working with the police and we should be able to get you compensation."

They should have said: "Sorry about that. Tell you what, we'll honour the coupon, since it's not your fault that this is a fake. But, we'll have to confiscate the coupon book. Give us your name and number and we'll try to get you reimbursement for the original cost of the book."

Even with the coupon, the restaurant is probably still making a net profit on our purchase. If not, it was at least an effective loss-leader to get us in the door. (If the offer is too rich to honour now, why was it okay earlier, even with the cost of the coupon book?).

Regardless of how the restaurant was impacted by the actions of the third-party that sold the coupons illegitimately, the business has just lost most, if not all, of the positive impression they had made on us until that point.

It doesn't matter who's fault it is; it matters whose customer it is.

No I Didn't

There's a bus bench ad near my house. It just has a simple photo (a stock image of an overly excited person, if I remember correctly) and a line of text with a phone number. It says "You just proved that advertising works!"

Obviously, the logic is that noticing and reading the ad means success.

Sadly, the majority of "marketers" probably think this is true.
To anyone who bothers to think about it, though, it's obviously nonsense.

Using the ad as its own example:
I'm in the marketing field. In fact, buying media is one of the main things that I do. I should be the perfect audience for the ad's message. If it really worked, I should have called the advertiser by now. At the very least, I should have remembered the phone number. Or gained some appreciation for the sophisticated elegance and tactical genius of putting commercial messages on bus benches.
Instead, I think no more positively about it than I did in the past. I'm no more aware of bench advertising than I was before driving past.
That same "You just proved..." message has been there for months, so I can only assume that nobody else has been sufficiently impressed to book that space either.

I won't belabor the point. It's simply that "Awareness is not enough". Even the old Marketing 101 "A.I.D.A." model recognizes this.

Along with the bus bench, I noticed a few other things the last time I drove down that stretch of road: some road kill and an abandoned car in the ditch (unrelated, I assume) come to mind. Did I "...just prove that roadkill and stalled cars work!" too?

Quality: Part 1

I have a challenge for every Brand Manager and Marketing Manager out there:
When you describe your brand, write a positioning statement, and try to define your competitive differentiators don't use the word "quality".

It's entirely too common to take a very black-and-white approach to branding and decide that a company or its products are focused on either:
a.) Quality
or
b.) Bargain

Since there's only room for one or two "Lowest price. Guaranteed" competitors in any market, that means that the majority of companies are going for the quality angle.

It's lazy and, even worse, almost meaningless. What does "quality" mean, anyway? It seems like a very arbitrary term like "value" and "unique". As a result, most consumers probably ignore the word any time a company claims it.

I'm not saying that quality isn't an important attribute. It definitely is. There's too much garbage out there and I'd love to see more companies strive for a higher level of quality. But, it's too vague.

Pick some different words. Something more detailed. Even just one step more specific would be great. How about "innovative", or "remarkable" (a great term that Seth Godin uses regularly), or "shocking", or "guaranteed", or "unbreakable" for starters?

There are some industries where every single competitor claims to provide "quality". It might be true, but they all take a different approach and have a different definition. I want to see what those differences are.

Remove the word from your vocabulary and I bet you'll get more creative and descriptive.